chezcherie

across the bay from your sf adventures (you can drive or BART there) in berkeley is a mecca for all things paella--the spanish table on san pablo st. they have paella pans from toy-sized ($6) to "feeds 200". cool place to spend a half hour, or a half day!spanish table

when i was in culinary school, my (female) pastry instructor told me that when (female) pastry chefs get married, they have to have long sleeved wedding gowns to hide the burn scars.

for me, blueberry is the wrongest wrong. ...and green ones for st. patrick's day.

why, thank you--- i think. actually, most of the time, i chew on them, like one would gnaw a great rib bone, then toss. but sometimes they are more tender, and then...good fiber, as you have pointed out.

i wish this were true where i live, as i would happily buy a smaller piece that someone else had snapped and left behind. i guess i'm the only ginger lover, or at least the only ginger snapper in my zip code. (i just hate to see the sad, wizened left overs, and i just never manage to store the rest in any of the ways i'm sure will be suggested now--jars of sherry, in the freezer, etc....i can barely get the milk out of the fridge without three other things falling out---i got no room for "stored" ginger") the thing about taking a cookie for your kid and not paying---not only is it stealing, it's teaching your kid to steal....i always used to clutch the little waxed paper thingy all the way to the check-out, to remind me!

pineapple core!

okay, i'' guess: "alice doesn't live here anymore?" or the tv spin-off there from?

i snap off the amount of ginger i need, instead of buying the whole "hand"...is this a crime, too? (it also helps to see if the ginger is fresh or terribly fibrous, altho i buy what i've snapped...) what makes me nuts, is buying fennel with the entire plant attached-i need the bulb and maybe a few fronds, not the whole damn bush, especially since i'm paying by the lb.

also, the older the onion, the more bite it will have. if it's sprouting, stand by for tears!

I have had good mussels at Brasserie Au Pied de Cochon. 6, rue Coquillière. 75001 - Paris. Arrondissement 01. Phone: (+33) 01 40 13 77 00. There is a place next door that's part of a small chain (Maitre de something?) that also has good ones--I think I liked the curried ones there. I seem to recall that both are open 24 hours. They are in the former Les Halles neighborhood, and across the street from the cookware mecca, Dehillerin (sadly, not open 24-7!) I've also eaten at the chain mentioned above, and also cannot recall the name, but it is instantly recognizable when you come upon one---looks like a "McMussels", with little lace curtains. Despite that, the mussels I had were perfectly acceptable. (I looooove mussels, as evidenced by my visit to "McMussels"..I will eat them in a house, I will eat them with a mouse. Mussels are my signature dish, and last night I may have created my signature, signature mussel dish--Marvelous Mexi-Mussels. Corn, shallots and chipotle.....oh, my. If there were any left, I would snarf them cold for breakfast....mmmmm.)

tried the trader joe's low carb dough. the family hated it---basically scraped the toppings off with their teeth and left the full cardboard wedges, with one little bite mark out of each. (the tj's regular dough is not half-bad, especially if you find yourself short on rise time, or yeastless.)

have seen these too--also didn't buy, as they were all wrapped up in the hard "clamshell" plastic, and were 4 for $3.99. at a buck a pop, i wanna at least be able to sniff them first! anybody try them yet?

yum! did a variation on the frank's hot wings suggestions above (frank's "new" lime and chile sauce, butter, vinegar and some hot-hot sauce--deep fried, because, well, the deep fryer was right there). pretty good... have some of the hoisin-y ones marinating now. those will go nicely with the apps i've got planned for an evening with friends. jeez--we may need more wings, because this pomegranate-hoisin one is singing my song, too! mmmmmm. thanks--keep 'em coming! edited to correct dangling parentheses.

oh my god, that's a beautiful photo. just beautiful. thank you. now i have smoker envy.

help me...i'm senile. (in truth, i think it's my three teenagers that are sucking the braincells out along with any cash i might have at any particular moment.) i don't really "do" chicken wings, because...well...there are so many parts on a chicken i like better. but somewhere in the course of the past week or so, i saw a wing treatment that inspired me to make a mental note to get a passle (gaggle? i guess maybe flock?) of wings to try out over the holiday weekend. if only i had attached the mental footnote containing the location of the recipe...or what it consisted of...or what style of cooking it was. nope. i'm a blank slate. but i have wings--a big costco pack of 'em. and teenaged boys and their many friends who will eat them, but probably not in their present state. (although if i starved them for, oh, say an hour, and left the wings in plain sight, who knows?) i thought, as so many good things culinary these days, that i had seen it on egullet, but a search ("wings", "chicken wings", recipegullet,etc.) has not proved fruitful. maybe it was hoisin-y...i just don't know....can't find it here, have looked in various recent publications that are at the top of the bedside heap, but can't find now what i found before... so, what to do wit' da wings? what's your fav way to wing it? take pity on a poor, wing-laden egulleteer, with only enough short-term memory remaining to find her keys (sometimes), but not enough to find her "to try" recipe stack. tell me what to do with these wings. today would be good, but we do have the whole holiday weekend. thanks!

Chandon has a nice "overview of method champagnoise (sp?)" tour which is interesting. Good restaurant, too.

anxious to hear what you did and how it worked...i bought some a few months back, and thought they were kinds gross. (ended up quick-sauting some, and tossing into pasta...tossed the rest into the garbage. )

hog island oyster farm at the ferry bldg has great, fresher-than-fresh oysters at what we found to be reasonable prices, with an unbeatable view. cheers!

for mother's day last year, my 18 yr old "riffed" off an epicurious recipe, and came up with "matt's magic mushrooms." he did par-bake them for 15 minutes, brushed with combo of evoo and bacon fat (that's why he's my favorite child...)(okay, they are all my favorite!), then stufffed with minced shallot, garlic, spinach, the bacon that the fat came from, and feta.....serious good. i have used them for many parties, featured them in cooking class, and my assistant now used them in her catering menus.

onion rings.

i just finished a very yummy tuna and rice salad, with capers, red onion and olives. squeeze of lemon....mmmm. (it's about 100 degrees here in southern cailfornia still.)

are they peppadews? i love those!

What Costco? Where??? I would LOVE to get my hands on itty-bitty Nutellas...I'm pretty sure they wll be in my dreams tonight..."must--have---baby-squeezy-nutellas...."

i think it's pearl sugar, isn't it?

the only thing that casts a pall over the big, fat eatin' vacation we just enjoyed in the wonderful city of new orleans (food diary to follow as soon as i get the homelife put back together, featuring tasting menu at restaurant august, a love-fest of flavors at uglesich's, and the most amazing pork belly in the universe at herbsaint...i can still taste it two days later--in the best posible way) is that i could possibly have been enjoying acme oysters, AND breathing the same air as mayhaw man on friday...and not have known it. we were there 5ish on friday (between peristyle lunch and herbsaint dinner..god--how DID we do it?) the oysters were much better than the ones we had at felix the first night, but that i understand could just be the luck of the draw...but it was my first crawfish encounter....and the red beans and rice, and the next plate of oysters....DAMN! i wish i coulda shook your hand, thanked you for the advice, and bought you an abita! cheers, anyhow!